GOP feuds over Obamacare tactics

Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have all joined the push to defund the law. | AP Photos

“There’s no line item in there for Obamacare, so actually, you’re not,” Cornyn said. “But you essentially have to shut down the government in order to prevent them from doing it. We are not arguing about the goal about doing away with Obamacare, we’re just talking about the means to that end.”

Indeed, after signing the Lee letter, Cornyn said he had “second thoughts” and took his name off of it. He said he worried that including language to defund Obamacare in the continuing resolution would give Democrats greater ability to increase spending, namely by “eroding” the sequester. The other GOP senators who took their names off the letter are Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Mark Kirk of Illinois. The letter now has 12 signatures.

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“It’s not a disagreement about the goal, because I voted to defund and repeal Obamacare more times than I can remember,” Cornyn said. “But it is a concern about the tactics.”

Indeed, a number of other GOP senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota, have been largely noncommittal about the hardball tactics. The Club for Growth, which is weighing whether to back McConnell’s 2014 primary challenger, has called on the Kentucky Republican to sign the defunding letter. A McConnell spokesman said Thursday that the senator “supports a permanent delay of Obamacare for everyone.”

But other Republicans are hardly enthusiastic about using a potential government shutdown as leverage in the fight over Obamacare.

“I think every Republican would like to see funding stripped out of Obamacare, absolutely,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). “I don’t want to be playing brinkmanship; I want to see our economy succeed.”

Arizona Sen. John McCain warned his colleagues not to replicate the Clinton-era shutdown, when congressional Republicans suffered a large portion of the blame.

“I’ve seen the movie before: Congress never wins,” McCain said Thursday. “They’re going to shut down the Grand Canyon; we start hearing from our voters. … So far, from what I’ve heard, there’s not a lot of Republicans that believe this is the right path.”

Still, the conservative effort has won support from some influential Republicans, including the No. 3 GOP senator, John Thune of South Dakota, and veteran Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

“If you don’t take every avenue to get rid of it, then you’re not being intellectually honest,” Grassley said Thursday.

The size and scope of the continuing resolution affects other legislative battles, including how Congress handles the debt ceiling. The fight over lifting the nation’s borrowing cap is likely to come mere weeks after the government funding battle in September. If conservatives don’t achieve their goals during the CR battle, they’re sure to carry over to the next major legislative fight.

The uncertainty over how September’s government funding fight will play out led to a frank discussion among House leaders about the heightened probability of a shutdown.

Participants in Wednesday’s House GOP leadership meeting — which included top Republican leaders — talked about how difficult it will be to resolve the differences over the CR in the nine legislative days scheduled in September. The most likely of the several options discussed would be to pass a short-term, two-month government funding measure, which would keep government coffers lined through early- to mid-December.

But Republican leaders are growing concerned by the fervor with which some members are demanding that Boehner defund the health care law as part of the government funding talks.

Meadows, the freshman North Carolina Republican, is circulating the letter, which has more than 60 signatures, urging Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to defund the implementation and enforcement of the health care law “in any relevant appropriations bill brought to the House floor in the 113th Congress, including any continuing appropriations bill.” Last Congress, a similar letter garnered 127 signatures.

Boehner, speaking to reporters Thursday, declined to say whether he would use the CR to defund the health care law.

“We will continue to do everything we can to defund it, repeal it and to make sure the American people aren’t put through this horrific experience,” he said.

Pressed if he would use the government funding bill to alter the individual mandate, the speaker said, “No decision has been made about how we’re going to deal with the CR next … [in] September.”

“We’ve not made any decisions about how we’re going to deal with this issue,” he said.